The involvement and active participation o f stakeholders in school governance through a fair representation creates a sense o f accountability, ownership and belonging to a school. This study examined and assessed the roles and functions played by the School Governing Bodies (SGBs) in Lesotho Secondary and high schools. In doing this, the study investigates how the roles and functions are put into practice and find out the stakeholders perceptions about the SGBs. A case study of four high schools was carried out. To capture the stakeholders’ perception about the SGBs, the study used semi-structured interviews and unstructured observations. The opinions were sought from the following stakeholders; parents ,teachers, chiefs, proprietor’s, nominees, district education officers (DEOs) and District Resource Teachers(DRTs). In addition, this study was informed by local and international literature on school governance. The study reveals that even though tha Lesotho policy on school governance was established within a short time without adequate preparations, the structure is highly supported by the respondents. However the members o f SGBs need regular training for the duties they are expected to perform and to know the powers they have. The findings also indicate that, if there are strong bonds and partnerships between the members of SGBs, teachers, students and the community at large, there will be cooperation and commitment. The study recommends that learners should be included in the SGB because they are future leaders. If you do not take the children forward, the future will remain in the past.

In my dissertation, I study the short- and long-term effects of early-life circumstances on individual’s human capital and explore some potential mechanisms driving these impacts. The focus on early-life conditions is motivated by the growing body of research showing the important role that early-life conditions play in shaping adult outcomes (Barker, 1992; Cunha and Heckman, 2007; Almond and Currie, 2011a). Evidence from natural experiments has found that adverse conditions during the in-utero and childhood periods (e.g., disease outbreaks, famines and malnutrition, weather shocks, ionizing radiation, earthquakes, air pollution) can have negative effects on health, education, and labor market outcomes (e.g., Almond, 2006; Almond et al., 2010; Van den Berg et al., 2006; Currie and Rossin-Slater, 2013; Almond, Edlund and Palme, 2009; Sanders, 2012). I focus on a particular shock which is violence – i.e., wars, armed conflicts, urban crime – that represents one of the most pervasive shocks for individual’s well-being and which mostly affects developing countries (Currie and Vogl, 2013). The World Bank (2013) estimates that more than 1.5 billion people in the developing world live in chronically violent contexts. Violence creates poverty, accentuates inequality, destroys infrastructure, displaces populations, disrupts schooling, and affects health. While recent research has shown the large damage on education and health outcomes from early life violence (Camacho, 2008; Akresh, Lucchetti and Thirumurthy, 2012; Minoiu and Shemyakina, 2012; Brown, 2014; Valente, 2011; Leon, 2012), several key questions remain unaddressed. First, how does violence affect other domains of human capital beside education and health (i.e., cognitive and non-cognitive skills)? Identifying such effects is important both because measures of human capital (physical, cognitive, and non-cognitive indicators) can explain a large percentage of the variation in later-life educational attainment and wages (Currie and Thomas, 1999; McLeod and Kaiser, 2004; Heckman, Stixrud and Urzua, 2006) and to understand mechanisms behind previous effects found for educational attainment and health. Second, to what extent do the effects of violence at different developmental stages (i.e., in-utero vs. in childhood) differ? Do the effects of violence persist in the long-term? Do impacts on the particular type of skill considered (e.g., health vs. cognitive outcomes) differ by the developmental timing of the shock? Third, given the size and persistence of the effects of violence, it is also natural to ask whether and how parental investments also may respond to these shocks. Family investments are important determinants of human capital (Cunha and Heckman, 2007; Aizer and Cunha, 2014) and parental responses can play a key role in compensating or reinforcing the effects of a shock (Almond and Currie, 2011a). At present, well-identified empirical evidence on this question is scarce. Finally, and perhaps most importantly from a policy perspective, is there potential for remediation?: Can social programs that are available to the community help mitigate the negative effects of violence on vulnerable children? My identification strategy exploits the temporal and geographic variation in local violence conditions. In particular, I exploit the occurrence of specific violent events such as homicides and massacres at the monthly-year-municipality levels in Colombia and I use large and varied micro data sets to provide causal estimates. I believe that the results from my research can shed some light on the consequences of early-life exposure to violence on human capital, some of the potential mechanisms through which these impacts operate, and provide some insights on possible public policy implications. In the first essay, “Early-life Conditions, Parental Investments, and Child Development: Evidence from a Violent Country,” I investigate how exposure to community violence during the in utero and childhood periods affect a child’s physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional development; how violence affects parental investments such as parenting quality; and whether social policies available to the community help mitigate the negative effects of violence on children. I focus on children, which is a particularly vulnerable subpopulation: Children in developing countries are subject to more and more frequent adverse conditions, start disadvantaged, and receive lower levels of investments compared with children from wealthier environments (Currie and Vogl, 2013). I show that children exposed to massacres in their municipality during their in utero and in childhood periods achieve lower health, cognitive, and socio-emotional outcomes and that the timing in which these exposures occur matters. In particular, exposure to massacres in late pregnancy and in childhood reduce child’s health and exposures in early pregnancy and in childhood lower cognitive test scores. Adequate interaction, an indicator of child socio-emotional development, falls among children who were exposed to violence after birth. Moreover, results show that violence is negatively associated with birth weight, an important input in the production of human capital. This impact is driven by exposure during the first trimester of pregnancy. Furthermore, I find that changes in violence during a child’s childhood are associated with lower quantity and quality of parenting. In particular, I find that an increase in violence is associated with a decline in the time mothers spend with their child, a decrease in the frequency of routines that stimulate a child’s cognitive development, and an increase in psychological aggression, which could reflect a mother’s stress. Overall, these results show little evidence that parents compensate the negative effect of violence on child outcomes. This is the first study to investigate the effects of early-life violence on child cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes in a developing country and among the first to investigate the role of parenting as a potential channel of transmission. Lastly, I find weak evidence that social programs have remediating impacts on children affected by violence. In the second essay, titled “The Hidden Costs and Lasting Legacies of Violence on Education: Evidence from Colombia”, I provide evidence of the long term impacts of exposure to crime and violence, from the prenatal period to age five, on an individual’s educational attainment. My identification strategy exploits the temporal and geographic variation in cohorts of individuals exposed to homicide rates during in their early lives during the 1980s and 1990s in Colombia, a period with an unprecendented rise in criminal activity. I use Census data that provide detailed information on the date and municipality of birth, and long-run outcomes (i.e., education) for each individual, which enables me to identify the violence to which a person was exposed in utero and in early childhood (as well as in later stages). I find that high violence in early-life is associated with lower educational attainment in the future (years of schooling and lower school enrollment). The findings also show that in utero and early-childhood exposure to violence has a more pronounced impact on human capital attainment than exposure at other stages of the life course (i.e., school age, adolescence). The timing and the magnitude of the effects are important considering the huge inequality in education in developing countries.

Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), this dissertation explores whether fathers talking to their children about dating affects the odds of their children having unprotected sex when they are emerging adults. Logistic regressions were used to analyze the relationship between one measure of father engagement, talking to the child about dating, and sexual risk taking, operationalized as having unprotected sex. Utilizing social capital theory and Lamb, Pleck, Charnov and Levine’s (1985, 1987) conceptualization of fatherhood, this paper explored the possibility that father involvement could either increase or decrease child’s sexual risk. Results from the first model indicate that talking to the father about dating increases the odds of children having unprotected sex. The results also showed that feeling close to the father was not a moderator. The second model investigated if there is a difference in the effect of father involvement by gender. Talking to the father about dating increased the odds of nonresident daughters and resident sons having unprotected sex. Feeling close to the father was not a moderator. The third model explored if there was a difference in the effects of father involvement by race and did find a difference. White resident children had increased odds of having unprotected sex if they talked to their fathers about dating. Feeling close to the father was not a moderator in this chapter. These results challenge the prominent narrative in the literature that father involvement is an unmitigated good influence in the child’s life; instead, these results show that for some children father involvement can create more harm than good. It is important to note that most fathers did not talk to their children about dating and that the specific content and tone of the conversations these fathers had with their children is unknown. There is space in the literature to explore how specific messages fathers give their children influence their sexual risk decisions in the future. There is also space for the creation of feminist focused fatherhood programs to help fathers talk to their children about dating and sex in a way that reduces child risk taking when they are older.

Transition from high school to adulthood for students with developmental disabilities is a monumental stage for both the individual and his or her family. Past research has shown that one of the most salient predictors of students’ successful transition is their parents’ involvement with transition planning, however, during this time parent involvement often declines (Grigal & Neubert, 2004). The current study examined parent involvement and knowledge during the transition from high school to adulthood for the parents of young adults with developmental disabilities. Participants included a diverse sample of 55 parents in an urban school district who had youth with special needs between the ages of 14 and 22. The present study examined parental psychosocial factors, demographic factors, parents’ experiences during the transition process, and three dimensions of their educational involvement: school involvement, transition involvement, and transition knowledge. The study found that parent experiences during the transition period (IEP familiarity, perceived teacher invitations, and perceived time and energy) as well as the socio-economics of school neighborhood, were the most salient factors associated with parental involvement and knowledge. The study offers suggestions for future research, policy, and intervention ideas to assist in improving parents’ positive experiences during the transition process. These suggestions aim in increasing parental involvement and knowledge during an important time in their youths’ educational development.

Math storybook reading can be a beneficial activity in the home numeracy environment that facilitates children’s exploration and understanding of numbers. Parents play an important role in guiding and supporting their children’s math development through their joint engagement in the story. Exploring how parents and their children interact during home activities such as math storybook reading is crucial given strong associations between the home numeracy environment and later academic success. The primary goal of this study was to investigate how parents supported their children’s early numeracy development as they responded to children’s number mistakes and engaged their children in conversation about the number concepts present in the story. Observations of parent-child interactions (n = 47) while reading a math storybook and interviews with parents were intended to uncover how parents can use storybooks as a means of involving their children in math learning and guiding their understanding of numbers. The present study expands on the extant math storybook literature by examining the role of parental beliefs and home practices in shaping parents’ and children’s behaviors during math storybook reading. Results indicated that parents’ beliefs about the importance of early math learning and their role in helping their children learn math were associated with a lower frequency of children’s simple math mistakes, a greater degree of support parents provided in response to those mistakes, and a greater amount of simple math concepts parents discussed with their children while reading. Furthermore, children exposed to a greater frequency of home counting activities completed more of the math tasks in the storybook. Finally, three main factors that appeared to drive parents’ selection and use of math storybooks were children’s interest, attention spans, and math abilities. These findings support the use of math storybooks as a potentially beneficial activity that can elicit positive parent-child interactions around number concepts and demonstrate that parents are intentional in how they use storybooks to guide their children’s math development. The results are discussed in relation to home support for early numerical development and contextualized within the math storybook literature.

African American parents have engaged in education activism throughout United States history, in attempts to gain better access to education for their children. Activism is taking direct actions to achieve a social or political goal. For some parents, the goal is positive change in schooling, at the local, community or state or national level, making their actions educational activism. In New York City, the nation’s largest public school system, parent activism has been documented describing actions of African American parents in cases such as the Harlem school boycott of 1958 and the struggle for control over the Ocean Hill-Brownsville schools in1967. The purpose of this dissertation is to add to a growing body of literature on education activism, moving beyond describing the actions by focusing on the experiences of the activists. Using Black feminist thought as a theoretical framework, this study employs a storytelling methodology to understand the lived experiences of seven African American mothers who engage in educational activism in New York City today. Black feminist thought provides a framework to understand the situated experiences of the mothers as they navigate oppression while seeking structural change in education. It also provides a means for understanding how the activities of these mothers are in fact activism, as their roles as “othermothers” are explored. The methodology, which employed conversational interviews and a focus group, was designed to center the mothers’ stories in the research, using their own words to make sense of what it means to be a Black woman, mother, education activist. The findings of this research present a picture of what activism is for these mothers and where it happens – at the local, state and national levels: highlighting how it happens both within and outside of existing structures for parent involvement. Another finding highlights the importance of having allies for activism. This research has implications for how teachers and others work with parents, suggesting strong collaborations with parent activists as a way to create positive change in schools.

Parents have been shown to be a crucial driver in a child's educational outcomes in both the economics and education literature. However, researchers have yet to understand the roles that educational interventions, information, and policies might have on parental behavior and engagement toward their child's education and, in turn, how to effectively promote parental engagement for the benefits of children. In my dissertation, I examine how educational interventions and policies can impact the behavior and decision-making of parents and in turn affect student achievement. Specifically, I add to the scholarly literature evidence on (a) how being identified as gifted student affect parental levels of engagement and time investments, (b) how timely information about academic progress might change parental behaviors and improve educational outcomes, and (c) how immigrant mothers react to an expansion of pre-K specifically targeted at their children. Chapter one examines the short-term and long-term effects of an elementary school gifted education program in California that clusters 6-8 gifted students in classrooms. While I examine the academic effects of the program, I emphasize the analysis on the role of parent engagement and time investments in the lives of gifted children. While the gifted education literature has studied the causal effects of programs, there is limited evidence on how parent engagement might change as a result of these programs and its potential as a mechanism for achievement effects. Therefore, this study contributes to the economic debate of whether parent engagement is a complement or substitute to education quality. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach, I primarily find small to no evidence on short-term academic effects, but stronger effects on longer-term course-taking and college outcomes. On the parent side, I find that while most parents are not more engaged overall, parents of minority gifted children and low-socioeconomic students are. The implication is that there is heterogeneity in the manner by which parents react behaviorally to students that are identified as gifted. In Chapter two, a joint paper with Peter Bergman, we run a randomized controlled trial in West Virginia examining the effects of a high-frequency academic information intervention on middle and high school student' academic outcomes. In this field experiment, we send out three types of alerts to parents - weekly missing assignments, weekly class absences, and monthly low grade average - during the 2015-16 school year. We find that the intervention reduces course failures by 38%, increases class attendance by 17%, and increases retention. We find no evidence that test scores improve, but find that there are significant improvements on in-class exam scores. The evidence of improvement in test scores show that there are information frictions between parent and child, and thus parents may have inaccurate beliefs about their child's abilities due to a lack of complete information. Chapter three examines the maternal labor supply and pre-K enrollment effects of a bilingual pre-K policy implemented in Illinois during the 2010-11 school year, which came after the implementation of a statewide universal pre-K program in 2007. Research has shown the importance of quality preschool in the development of a child, with minorities particularly sensitive to the prevalence of quality early childhood education. In this study, I exploit variation in a policy mandating that any school with at least twenty identified English Language Learner student of a particular language is required to open up a bilingual classroom for those students. Using multiple control groups and various difference-in-differences specifications, I find that there is little to no change in maternal labor supply among Hispanics and recent immigrants, including the probability of being in the labor force, hours worked per week, and wage and salary income. However, I also find a significant and robust increase of 18-20 percentage points in the enrollment of 3- and 4-year old children into pre-K programs in Illinois. This result shows that, even in a state where there is universal access to pre-K, the design of such policies might not have sufficient reach to high-need parents. Taken together, this dissertation helps deepen our understanding of the various roles parents might affect educational outcomes and inequality. As my results demonstrate, there are various ways which help and incentivize parents to react in a manner that will improve childhood and long-term outcomes. Whether by programs, information, or public policy, the tools are many, yet it is crucial that scholarly work continues to dive deeper into how parents, children, and other stakeholders react.

This study explored the relationship between (1) parent mathematical mindset and student mathematical experience (as determined by student mathematical mindset, student mathematical achievement, and student mathematical grit), (2) participant general mindset and participant mathematical mindset, and (3) student general grit and student mathematical grit. Participants included 14 high school seniors and their active parent(s) or guardian(s) (N=38). The research followed a hermeneutical phenomenological approach - a qualitative research methodology characterized by finding meaning through the subjective interpretation of participants. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected to describe the phenomenon of student mathematical experience, as well as the internal consistency of mindsets as applied to general intelligence and mathematical intelligence. A moderate positive association was found between participants' general mindsets and mathematical mindsets. Despite the consistencies, 37% of participants had mathematical mindsets that were in tension with their general mindset. The present study advocates that general mindsets and mathematical mindsets are not as closely associated, thereby supporting the theory that mindsets can vary by subject domain. In contrast, a strong positive association was found between students' general grit and their mathematical grit. To that effect, the study contributed to the field in two ways: (1) by exposing further variability in mindsets dependent on subject domain; and (2) by exposing grit as more fundamentally consistent than mindset when applied to different subject domains. Additionally, parent mathematical mindset is not associated with student mathematical mindset. It's possible that (1) parents' mathematical mindsets are not visible to their children, (2) parents suppress their beliefs regarding mathematical intelligence, or (3) external factors, such as cultural influences, compete in shaping students' mindsets. Finally, although no relation was found between parent mathematical mindset and both student GPA and SAT score, an inverse relationship was observed between parent mathematical mindset and student highest-level mathematics course taken. Markedly, students of parents with a mathematics-fixed mindset appear to take more advanced mathematics courses, whereas students of parents with a mathematics-growth mindset appear to take lower-level courses. This suggests that student effort may be in tension with the evaluation of effort by their parents.

Latinos are the largest and fastest growing ethnic minority group in the United States. Academically, they are significantly trailing their non-Latino peers in graduation and overall educational attainment. Among many socioeconomic factors, parent engagement has been identified as being a defining indicator of student success. Reflective of racial and class disparities, this study explored with the use of critical race and intersectionality theory, that low Latino parent engagement is a result of the historical devaluing and omission of Latino culture, history and language from formal academic settings, and compounding social factors that make engagement complex for Latino immigrants in America today. In search of programmatic designs that better engage Latino families, this study explored a culturally specific program in San Francisco and its impact on engaging Latino immigrant parents. Using ethnographic methodologies, this study found via direct observation, a parent focus group, nine parent interviews and seven school personnel interviews that culturally specific programs can successful build relationships, create inclusive spaces, counter ideas of deficit thinking, interrupt systems of oppression, and strengthen community engagement. Implications of this study on social work education, practice, and policy will be discussed.

While home schooling is by no means a new phenomenon, the last three decades have seen an increasing trend in the engagement of this educational alternative. In many countries, including Australia, a growing number of families are opting to remove their children from the traditional schooling system for numerous reasons and educate them at home. In response to the recent home schooling movement a research base in this area of education has emerged. However, the majority of research has been undertaken primarily in the United States of America and the United Kingdom, with very few studies having examined home schooling in Australia. The existing corpus of research is also relatively small and incomplete. Also, certain categories of home schoolers and the processes involved in their undertaking of this modern version of a historically enduring educational alternative have been overlooked. In particular, children with disabilities appear to be one of the home schooling groups that have attracted very little research world wide. This group constituted the focus of the study reported in this thesis. Its particular concern was with generating theory regarding how parents deal with educating their children with intellectual disabilities from a home base over a period of one year. Data gathering was largely carried out through individual, face-to-face semi-structured interviewing and participant observation in the interpretivist qualitative research tradition. However, informal interviews, telephone interviews and documents were also used to gather supplementary data for the study. Data were coded and analysed using the open coding method of the grounded theory model and through the development and testing of propositions. The central research question which guided theory generation was as follows: 'How do parents within the Perth metropolitan area in the state of Western Australia deal with educating their children with intellectual disabilities from a home base over a period of one year?' The central proposition of the theory generated is that parents do so through progressive modification and that this involves them progressing through three stages over a period of one year. The first stage is designated the stage of drawing upon readily-available resources. The second stage is designated the stage of drawing upon support networks in a systematic fashion. The third stage is designated the stage of proceeding with confidence on the basis of having a set of principles for establishing a workable pattern of home schooling individualised for each circumstance. This theory provides a new perspective on how parents deal with the home schooling of their children with intellectual disabilities over a period of one year. A number of implications for further theory development, policy and practice are drawn from it. Several recommendations for further research are also made.